How many staff it has employed on agency contracts in each of the last five years.

The SPCB does not contract directly with agency workers, but goes through employment agencies, who then place workers on assignment with the SPCB. IT and non-IT agency staffing arrangements are managed separately, and the information is therefore split in to the two categories below.

Non-IT Agency Workers
Information about non-IT agency assignments is only held for current and previous calendar years, and therefore no detailed data on agency staffing prior to 2015 is available. The average number of non-IT agency workers on assignment has, however, been published in the SPCB annual accounts since 2013-14:
FY 2013-14
FY 2014-15
FY 2015-16
FY 2016-17 (to end November)
31
35
33
14
(Average of full time equivalent agency staff on assignment at the end of each month in the reporting period.)

IT Agency Staff
The information we hold on IT agency staff is based on the number of assignments worked, rather than the number of workers. Information on the number of assignments worked between 2011 and 2016 is shown below. This includes assignments which began before 2011 but continued into, or ended in, later years; assignments that started and ended during years (reflecting the higher turnover of agency staff); assignments by workers who had more than one assignment in a year or over the period; and part time assignments.
Year
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016 (to date)
Number of assignments undertaken during year
5
8
18
25
28
28